


siren

by synapses



Series: star-spangled one shots [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Mutual Pining, dumb idiots are dumb, steamy pool scenes!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:28:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22661011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synapses/pseuds/synapses
Summary: You and Steve can't seem to stay away from one another.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Reader
Series: star-spangled one shots [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1458418
Comments: 1
Kudos: 70





	siren

**Author's Note:**

> i was really in my feels writing this lol

Tony’s costume party is, unsurprisingly, a spectacle. Five floors of Avengers Tower have been elaborately decorated, each with a different theme—the floor below you, for example, is a speakeasy, all gleaming hardwood and leather, with a songstress crooning over smooth jazz and mobsters ordering scotch at the bar. (You think it was Pepper’s idea; Tony just wouldn’t do something that elegant.) 

The bass on your floor is turned so high that it rattles your teeth and sends pleasurable shockwaves through your bones. You’re at the very center of a dance floor that’s masquerading as a nineteenth century ballroom (replete with candelabras, their flames flickering orange). It’s drenched in fog, and the figures dancing around you seem to slip in and out of the mist like flighty spirits. 

Wanda and Vision twirl into your field of view from the left, dressed as Frankenstein’s monster and his bride, then disappear. You see Sam at the bar in angel wings and a halo and wonder if he lost a bet. Then you notice Bucky, darkly handsome in a slim-fit black suit and devil horns, and decide that yes, he definitely did. 

A party like this is a hell of a time for an empath. Especially one with her shields down. 

You’re dangerous and riding high on a wave of other people’s euphoria; your control is hanging by a shadow of a thread. You consider reflecting the emotions you’re feeling back out into the crowd—all of that desire and aggression multiplied a hundredfold would probably cause a riot, and you’re feeling wild enough that you think it might be fun—but you manage to resist the temptation. 

A guy in a Tyler Durden costume bumps into you and his eyes widen as he checks you out. “What are you supposed to be?” 

You take a breath of his confusion, revel in the feeling of it. “I don’t know, what are you supposed to be?” Then you twist his confusion into the vague feeling that he’s supposed to be somewhere else, right now. He nearly falls over in his haste to get away. 

The white dress must not be working. You frown and head to the bathroom, hoping to catch a glimpse of your reflection. Earlier, Natasha had dressed you in a flowing Grecian-style gown, crowned you in a gold circlet, and handed you a sword. You’d looked almost unbearably innocent, all wide doe eyes and shy smiles. 

In this mirror, however, you look just as predatory as you feel. The dress leaves nothing to the imagination: the plunging neckline seems positively indecent, and the slit on the side lands high on your thigh, exposing what feels like miles of skin. What really gives you away, though, is that your pupils are blown so wide that you can barely see your irises. Shit. You splash some water on your face, the relative solitude of the bathroom clearing your head. 

Natasha is mixing cocktails at the bar, and you’re about to stride over and ask her to make you a whiskey sour when you’re pulled abruptly to a stop.

Steve’s grip on your arm is gentle, but his look is thunderous. “You’re high.” 

“And you’re…” you look him up and down, noting that his costume includes tight breeches, high boots, a sword, a crown, and a jacket that strains against his muscular frame. “A king?” 

“Tony dressed me up as King Arthur,” he says shortly. “Said he thought it would be funny if democracy’s biggest defender became a king for the night.”

“Now let’s go.” He starts leading you towards the elevators. You can tell he’s still angry, and it puts your hackles up, pulls on the emotions you’ve been absorbing from the crowd. You wrench your hand from his grip. 

“I’m an adult and I can make my own decisions. Even more importantly, and for lack of better word choice, you’re no longer my mentor, and you can’t tell me what to do.”

“Oh yes, I can. Your shields are down. When was the last time you felt an emotion that wasn’t someone else’s?” 

You consider this for a second and decide you don’t like the answer. “I don’t feel like fighting, Steve. I’ll go. Alone.” 

You don’t stick around to see how your former mentor responds; instead, you head directly to the indoor pool. It’s closed for the party, so you’ll be alone. You press your thumb to the biometric reader and the door clicks open. The room is decorated with warm brown tiles, and the water throws flickering reflections against the walls. 

You’ve always liked it in here, come often to swim and be alone with your thoughts. Water gently eddies around you as you step into the pool, and the white dress that you’ve neglected to take off billows with the force of the current. 

The pool is heated, and you sink into it up to your shoulders, reveling in the feeling of warmth on your skin. Curls of steam rise to the ceiling as you soak, leaning back to wet your hair. The water soothes and centers you enough so that you finally realize what Natasha has dressed you as. The Lady of the Lake to Steve’s King Arthur. _That bitch._ Once you see her again you’ll tell her that you don’t quite appreciate the comparison.

Relaxed enough, you move into shallower water, now only covered up to your waist. Your dress has turned almost see through, clinging to your body indecently, but it doesn’t make you feel exposed. After all, who’s going to see it? 

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., turn the lights off, please,” you say, and the overhead lights go dark. The only lighting in the room now is within the pool, and it glows a luminescent blue green around you. 

You close your eyes. 

The lock on the door clicks, and you hear someone enter the room behind you. From the tread—strong, defined footsteps, but somehow perfectly balanced—you think you know who it is. 

You say, without turning to face Steve, “I’m not going to give you a sword, you know. The Lady of the Lake was a sorceress, not a siren.”

It comes out petulant, still, and you realize that you’re more hurt than you thought by Steve’s anger. It makes you feel like you did something wrong—like feeling other people’s emotions, like being _yourself_ is something terrible. 

His response is wry. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I make a pretty terrible King Arthur.” 

You don’t respond. 

He sighs, and it echoes behind you. “I’m sorry. I let my anger get the better of me.” 

Firmly in charge of your own shields, you resist the urge to peek behind them and learn whether he’s actually sorry. You’d never allowed yourself to read Steve’s emotions unless he’d asked you to during training. Partly because it would be a serious violation of the mentor-mentee relationship, and partly because, despite your reputation, your heart has always been rather fragile when it comes to him. 

Better to hide your feelings in a locked box and keep them firmly there. Better to make yourself unattached, flighty, always tempting and seductive, but never emotionally compromised, than to let yourself be distracted by fragile daydreams of him holding you close. 

Instead, you’ve dated around. You’ve charmed men and women alike, becoming infamous for your tempestuous, passionate romances with other heroes-in-training. At Tony’s parties, you’ve surrounded yourself with crowds of admirers who hang onto your every word. 

And you’ve responded to every one of Steve’s attempts to mentor you with haughtiness and disdain, which never fails to make him furious. 

Yet he’s never passed off your training onto someone else, not Tony (who sits with you in the common room late at night, nursing a cup of coffee, and seems to understand what it means to hide vulnerability under an arrogant shell) or Wanda (who sees your mind, and brushes your hair till it shines, and calls you “little bird” under her breath when she thinks you’re asleep). At this point, you honestly can’t fathom why. 

And now he’s apologizing to your back as you stand there, unable to look at him. Another piece of your abused heart breaks. 

Slowly, you turn around. 

You turn around, and it knocks all of the wind out of him. Steve stands there, mute, unable to tear his eyes away from you. 

He knows you’re beautiful. Hell, sometimes you seem to throw your beauty at him like a weapon, and he hates how susceptible he is to it. He’d been unable to tear his eyes away from you earlier—you with your bedroom eyes, and the dress with the slit that periodically moved to reveal expanses of skin that he desperately wanted to touch. 

Natasha had pointed you out from across the room, with a jerk of the head and a muttered, “There she is. Go talk to her, you idiot.”

He hadn’t had the heart to point out to her that he’d been unable to resist watching you since the moment you’d walked in. 

“You know why I can’t,” he’d said instead, and taken a huge swig of his bourbon. 

“No, I actually don’t know.” She’d set down the drink she was mixing to stare at him thoughtfully. “All I see is you insisting on sabotaging your own happiness.” 

Steve had stared at the bottom of his glass, hoping for answers within the brown liquid. 

Maybe it was the shame that prevented him from being honest with you. There was a strict non-fraternization policy between mentors and mentees that, in truth, he mostly agreed with—it prevented anyone from taking advantage of the power imbalance that existed between older members of the Avengers and newer recruits. He’d even helped draft it.

He’d felt like a predator and a hypocrite when, instead of coming up with training plans and figuring out how to refine your powers, he’d begun dreaming of winding his fingers through your hair and kissing you senseless, of finding ways to make your eyes crinkle up when you laughed. 

His guilt had made him lash out, venting his frustration on punching bags instead of acknowledging his feelings. And it meant he had an especially short fuse when it came to you—that at the end of a training session, when you had managed to take him down and landed on top of him, panting with exertion—he found something to critique, rather than giving you the praise you deserved. 

The worst thing was that, even when your cohort had become full-fledged members of the team, he couldn’t stop himself from feeling like he had a claim on you. He knew he had no right— _no right_ —to feel that way, but he could never stop himself from nursing a drink and staring darkly at the people who orbited you like planets. 

So he’d seen you earlier, drunk on other people’s emotions, and his instinct to protect you had trumped any rational thought. You’d stormed away, thrown your non-relationship in his face, and he’d immediately realized that it had been a mistake. 

He’d come to find you, in the pool as you always were (whether it was some quirk of a siren nature, or just your particular affinity for it, he was never sure) and thought of his apology on the way: _I’m sorry. I know you don’t need me to try and save you from yourself. But I want to be there for you, if you’ll let me._

And now you’re in front of him, hair flowing and wet on your shoulders, cheeks bright from the heat, in a transparent white dress, with your lips parted and eyes dark with something he can’t quite name. 

“Steve?” you breathe softly. You’re not sure what you’re doing, only that his name leaving your mouth is an invitation. 

His head snaps up, eyes fixed on you. This time, you hope that something of how you feel shows in your eyes. 

He takes slow, tentative steps into the pool until he’s standing in front of you. You’d forgotten how much mass he seems to take up to you, and you step closer, as if he has his own gravity that you’re helpless to escape. 

Suddenly you can’t breathe, can’t say anything. You couldn’t move away if you tried. 

“Read me,” he says gently.

“I can’t,” you whisper weakly. 

“I’m asking you to.” 

“You don’t know what you’re asking me.” 

Read him, and crush your last hopes of being loved forever? But his gaze is steady, patient, and he reaches out a hand—lightly, so lightly—to cup your cheek. 

“Read me.” 

You take a deep breath and do it. 

You’ve never been in love before Steve, but you know it, know its shape from years of watching others. Comparing that love to what Steve feels for you is like comparing a candle to a raging bonfire—his burns hotter by several orders of magnitude. It leaves you shell-shocked. 

“Since when?”

“Bucky’s birthday party.” 

You let out a small huff of laughter. “Seriously? When you told me that I was reckless and used my empathy like an emotional wrecking ball?”

His expression is soft. “That night. When you calmed him down in the middle of a nightmare.” 

You remember; it was only a few weeks after you’d joined the team. A light sleeper, you’d heard Bucky’s cries from down the hall and soothed him using your power. He’d hugged you so tightly you’d had bruises for weeks. Steve had come to find the source of the commotion, stared at you in Bucky’s arms for a minute or so, nodded, and left. 

There’s a pause. You realize that he looks nervous—the first time you think you’ve ever seen him that way—and that he doesn’t know how you feel about him. 

On a deep breath, you say, “I’ve loved you from the minute I met you, I think.”

That’s all the encouragement he needs; suddenly, you’re in his arms, pressed against his chest, and he’s kissing you fiercely. Neither of you are tender—you have years of pent-up desire to make up for—and you lose yourself in the feeling of him, not quite sure whether this is reality or a dream. 

Until you wake up tangled in the sheets, sunlight beaming through the windows, and his arms are still wrapped tightly around you.


End file.
